The present invention relates to gaming devices in general and, more specifically, to portable gaming devices suitable for use in gaming establishments such as casinos and bingo halls.
In recent years, radio-controlled hand-held or portable electronic bingo devices, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,455,025 and 4,624,462 both to Itkis and in bingo industry publications, including an article “Bingo Playing Enhanced With New Innovations”, Bingo Manager, July, 2001, gained substantial popularity in casinos. However, mobile electronic bingo devices have limited applications in a casino environment and are labor-intensive because of the need to download bingo cards at a point-of-sale terminal operated by a cashier.
Recently, portable remote gaming devices were proposed for playing “classic” casino games such as poker, slots and keno. In particular, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,012,983 and 6,001,016 both to Walker, et al., propose to utilize pager-like devices for remote monitoring of the progress of a slot game executed automatically on a player's behalf on an actual slot machine available at a “casino warehouse.” However, Walker limits play to a rather passive observation of the game and, therefore, diminishes a player's interest in the game. Besides, Walker's approach requires a costly investment in real slot machines located remotely at a “casino warehouse.” In addition, Walker does not provide any mechanism for facilitating the labor-intensive process of distributing gaming devices to players and does not assure security of the gaming devices. A commercial implementation of remote playing on a “warehoused” slot machine by GameCast Live as disclosed in “Expanding Casino Borders”, International Gaming and Wagering Business, September 2001, suffers from the same deficiencies as Walker's disclosures. Moreover, although GameCast Live offers players convincing video and audio data streams originating at video cameras aimed at actual slot machines, such implementation is labor intensive and requires costly hardware. In addition, such an approach cannot provide a casino with an adequate number (e.g., several hundred) of remote wagering devices since the overall radio frequency (RF) bandwidth available for a casino is severely limited.
On the other hand, a cellular telephone-based approach to remote gaming being promoted by companies, such as Motorola, Inc., TRIMON Systems, Inc. and NuvoStudios, Inc., as disclosed, for example, in “NuvoStudios, Inc., Corporate Profile”, NuvoStudios, Inc., October 2001 and “Mobile Casino Solution”, TRIMON Systems, Inc., October 2001, does alleviate the issue of available radio frequency bandwidth. Yet, remote gaming on cellular telephones is functionally indistinguishable from gaming on the Internet. Although casinos are tempted by the lucrative prospects of Internet gaming, such as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,800,268 to Molnick, 5,999,808 to La Due and 5,779,545 to Berg et al., the disclosed Internet wagering techniques cannot be directly transplanted into casino environment because of the vast differences between the security and integrity requirements of “brick-and-mortar” casinos and “click-and-mortar” casinos. While there is no conceivable motivation for an Internet player to sabotage his or her own personal computer (PC), telephone or mobile Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), an unscrupulous player will not hesitate to subvert a casino slot machine. In addition, a potentially unscrupulous player is thwarted from cheating on the Internet by the fear of violating a vast plethora of laws and regulations aimed to prevent wire fraud and credit card fraud. In comparison, the intra-casino operation of slot machines is typically outside of purview of such anti-fraud laws. Being functionally equivalent to gaming on stationary Internet terminals, wireless gaming on Internet-enabled phones and PDAs suffers from the same serious security and integrity deficiencies that are inherent in stationary Internet terminals.
In many modern electronic bingo systems, such as disclosed on the website having URL www.fortunet.com, players buy electronic and/or paper bingo cards at a point of sale terminal (such as described in our co-pending U.S. Patent Application No. 2003/0104865) that issues a sales receipt to a purchaser of bingo cards. The receipt typically includes a receipt identification number and may also include a barcode that uniquely identifies the receipt. The player then enters such an identification number into a bingo player unit, e.g., a wireless bingo player unit, and in response, the player unit relays the entered identification number to a central file server, which in its turn, downloads bingo cards corresponding to the receipt identification number into the player unit. However, the manual entry of the identification number by the player is error prone, cumbersome and not conducive to assuring the security and integrity of bingo cards sales by roving cashiers on the floor of the bingo hall. Moreover, the sales of bingo cards to players by roving cashiers are not currently tracked by any means and consequently, players lose the opportunity to earn player loyalty points for purchasing bingo cards on the bingo hall floor while bingo hall operators lose a valuable opportunity to track the purchasing activities of players.